What was the appeal of Hit Clips in the early 2000s?

I read earlier today about this early flash storage music format from the early 2000s known as Hit Clips. They were basically small cartridges that contained a low bitrate 1 minute or so sample of popular bubblegum songs from the era. They cost from what I could find around $3.99 in the US at the time. By comparison, a CD single in the UK at the time cost about £3.99 when first released and CD singles in the US were probably around $5.99 or so at the time, and as CD singles were not significantly more expensive than Hit Clips, I don't understand why these were popular with children and teenagers in the early 2000s when I know many young people had portable CD players in the early 2000s. Does anyone know what their appeal was at the time considering that CD singles were only slightly more expensive as well as being a full length version of a song (plus usually 2-3 other tracks) and having a much better sound quality?

 

i had never heard of this before now..
HitClips - Wikipedia

 

Same. Guessing this was short lived.

jeff

 

I can't believe everyone here doesn't watch Techmoan covering obsolete formats.

 

I've seen some of his youtube videos. Don't have the time to watch everything.

jeff

 

There was no appeal at the time. It was just another ill-conceived, poorly researched, poor-functioning electronics product whose originators managed to find some investment capital to flush down the loo. Nobody - except for the usual mix of a handful of early adopters, electronic gadget hoarders and impulse buyers - gave a spit about it. It was a pointless solution to a non-existent need.

 

Consider ringtones - for a while there were some artists making more off $0.99 or $1.99 30 second low-quality clips than the actual song. And walled-garden DRM devices that prevented unauthorized tones.

 

Ringtones did at least have some sort of actual purpose, though (these days you can make your own ringtone from an existing CD using Audacity), which Hit Clips didn't.

It looks like it was possible to get blank recordable third party compatible Hit Clips cartridges which may have had a limited amount of purpose for those who couldn't afford a Minidisc or MP3 player.

 

It's worth considering the target market for these was pre-teens rather than teenagers or adults. I don't think these were ever intended to be a serious threat to any of the major formats of the time, but suspect they were aimed at providing a durable (no moving parts in the playback mechanism!) entry into the children's market, presumably to prime them for music consumption as teenagers. Given the licensing support they received from several labels (EMI/Capitol and Warner/Atlantic), it's clear that someone thought these were worth pursuing.

 

Does anyone here know what the bitrate and likely storage capacity of these things would have been (I'm guessing they used some sort of early flash storage, which I know was still quite expensive and limited in 2000, yet these sold for relatively little)? The sound quality reminds me a little of homebrew NES demo ROMS of real sound recordings (rather than chiptune audio) so it's possible that they used some kind of 8 bit format, probably at around 32kbps or so.

 

A quick Google search turned up this (including some sound clips from the Jackson 5 ABC release):

Reverse engineering a Hit Clip | ch00ftech Industries

Also some comments on a Reddit thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/1u4jkv/reverse_engineering_a_14_year_old_tiger/

Short version - it appears to be a PWM encoding that would translate to about 8/24.

 

The removable "clip" is actually 90% of the system. It has an ASIC that when powered outputs its 2 bit audio in a low sample rate near sigma-delta modulation scheme. The only thing required is an "amp" of positive and negative rail transistors.

 

If you have to ask what the appeal was, you already missed the point. It was a toy. For children. It seems quaint now but it was cool that this tiny thing could play a horrible sounding minute of a song. And no, it wasn’t a replacement for your Walkman. It was just a novelty. The 90’s and 00’s were the high point for electronic toys taking over from stick-and-ball, or whatever the old farts played with in the 60’s. You’re at the toy store, it’s 2000, you see this thing that plays cool pop songs, or you see an action figure, that maybe lights up? Which one do you gravitate to as a burgeoning tech-nerd?

 

Perhaps the latter.

I was a baby in 2000 but had I been the age I am now and into the kind of music released as Hit Clips, I'd have considered it a waste of money and spent £100 or so on a decent Walkman, portable CD or Minidisc player instead. While proper playback hardware sold for considerably more than a Hit Clips player, CD singles seemed much better value than these cartridges, since they sold for little more, contained the whole of the feature song, were in a lossless 16 bit format, and typically had 2-6 tracks, although they were probably also more prone to getting damaged if they weren't handled properly.